Instagram recently changed its Hashtag search API. We shall throw some light on how it might impact your future campaigns. So, if you are new to this or an old candidate, this blog can help anyone looking to run an Instagram hashtag campaign.
Hashtag campaigns are run by a majority of brands looking to get more engagement, boost brand awareness, and many such benefits. Hashtag campaigns make it easy for you to spread your message, get more followers, and build a community around your niche. People post using the hashtag and others get in contact with them, this improves communication, and like-minded come together to make your campaign a success.
While determining whether your hashtag campaign was a success has many criteria, first, we need to understand whether it suits your brand and your goals or not. We shall also discuss some benefits and how to its success. Let’s dig in.
Hashtag campaign – Overview
As the name suggests, a hashtag campaign is a social marketing strategy that revolves around a hashtag to promote the band, spread the word, boost awareness, launch products, create buzz about upcoming events, etc.
Select an easy-to-read unique hashtag that best represents not just the campaign but your entire brand as well. The whole point is to get your customers to start using the hashtag and reach a wider audience.
Let’s move on to cover some benefits, examples, and how you can run a successful hashtag campaign.
Benefits of a hashtag campaign
To pitch the idea of a hashtag campaign to your boss can be exciting, but if you do not have the best use cases in your mind, you cannot grab their attention and hop them on board. Here are a few benefits with a few examples that can help you convince them better. Here goes.
1. Builds awareness
Hashtags are best to get the word out to a much wider audience. If your brand is relatively new, hashtags can be your best bet to generate awareness. Calvin Klein used a hashtag to spread the word about their products even further.
2. Promotes the products, services, events, etc.
Hashtags can also be used to promote your products, services, and events. Create a hashtag for an upcoming event, let the word spread, and create a buzz about the event way before it actually happens.
Many movies use this tactic, moreover, big brands like Adidas, Reebok, etc. also use this strategy for every product launch to promote their new products and boost their sales.
3. Collects information
Hashtags aggregate similar content together and make it easier for users to search for the required content. If you hold a discussion about a topic, it gets easy for brands to maintain what people are saying.
4. Increases user engagement
A successful hashtag campaign can generate a lot of engagement in users and can get them to follow you on other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as well. The whole point is to spread the word, so to get this done make sure you make it easy for users to share content.
5. Collects UGC
Hashtag campaigns get your customers to create and share content featuring your products and services. They share images and videos with your products and depict their purpose. This unfiltered and raw content relates to your potential audience more.
How to run a hashtag campaign?
Now that we know the benefits betters, it is time to talk about what to look for before running your hashtag campaign. Here are three steps you can take to play your campaign well and propel your strategy forward.
1. Understand your audience
To ensure that your campaign does not go to waste, you need to understand your audience better. Make sure that the hashtag is relatable, and people can post content on it without much effort. Keep the demographics in mind, have a clear customer persona, and understand their online behavior patterns to ensure success.
2. Define the goals
If you wish to make sales, increase awareness, and generate more engagement, a hashtag campaign can come to your rescue. Create a hashtag that aggregates information in order to help your audience have some fun with your brand.
3. Make participation easy
When people get a feeling that it is difficult to connect with the brand, they often leave it. You dont want too many steps for participation, use criteria like a simple post, story, or comment. It should be easy and simple, the only mandatory thing should be the hashtag.
How to track success?
Social media aggregator platforms like Taggbox help in collecting all the data from a social media platform and displaying it in one place. You can then embed the Hashtag campaign on the website as well or repurpose it on other marketing touchpoints to reach the website audience as well as social media users.
Moreover, you get an analytics feature that offers you insights into how your audience is behaving with the widget on the website.
To track the success of your campaign you also need to check:
- The number of posts created.
- Number of users who posted content
- How many likes, shares, and comments your hashtag received?
- How many people’s feeds did the word spread to?
- How many views did your hashtag get?
Keep an eye on the metrics and determine the success in order to improve your performance.
Conclusion
This is the most effective method to build commitment on Instagram. So, ready to start your own hashtag campaign? Create buzz, engage your audience, build social media users, understand your brand advocates, and much more.
